The new apps look and behave much like the native apps you find on Windows and OS X. They're built using web technologies, but also with Chrome-specific code that means they won't be able to run on other web browsers - they're truly Chrome apps. They can exist outside of your browser window as distinct apps, work offline, and sync across devices and operating systems. They can also access your computer's GPU, storage, camera, ports, and Bluetooth connection. Chrome Apps are, for now, only available through Chrome on Windows or Chrome OS on a Chromebook. Mac users will have to wait another six weeks before their version of Chrome will be updated.

This is very important for Chrome OS - since this means it can now have applications outside of the browser. Google's plans for Chrome OS suddenly became a whole lot clearer.

It seems to me like google is just using this platform to break MS's domination of office possibly even on the corporate desktop. Unless I am wrong google is just using the salt and pepper interface in chrome to provide the platform for these applications. No word on the cost of these suites, nor on file compatibility. But they will have to be compatible with existing applictaions to get any traction.

Has anyone seen how inexpensive some of these chromeos devices are?

I'm just not seeing how a new competitor to MS office and other MS locked in applications is a bad thing. People can still run libreoffice if they like, or go spend the many $$$'s to buy a copy of ms office.

Don't remember ActiveX and how it locked in businesses for half a decade? Remember Google does NOT gets its money from you, YOU are the PRODUCT that Google harvests for the advertisers that are its customers.

So yeah,giving Google a way to lock users into Chrome, which will let them be as nasty as they wanna be with datamining because hey, you lose your apps if you don't agree ya know...yeah this is bad, VERY bad.

I'm just amazed how many here after having a half a decade of MSFT rule is will to hand rule over to yeat another Megacorp. Villain with god PR indeed.

1) This is only meant for Web apps, but soon PNACL will be considered production ready.

2) This means that we will have truly cross platform apps, that run in a safe environment, that can be written in any language, run anywhere, that use standard APIs, and the implementation is open source.

3) This is way beyond what technologies like Java, Javascript, C#, etc. could do or were supposed to do. Imagine the big apps like Photoshop ported to this. Google's aim is to leave Operating Systems like Windows or OSX in the dust and make everything depend on the cloud, this is the missing piece of the puzzle. Yet, everything they make is opensource, so competitors can implement it if they wish.

All companies are generally sociopathic by the nature of their obligations to their shareholders. ( Calling them 'good' and 'evil' is an over simplification IMO ).

That said, there is nothing particularly negative about this action by Google. Google is simply using Chrome as a base platform to build apps upon. You install the apps from the internet and they use internet technologies but they won't realistically replace websites any more then Apple iOS or Android apps do.

Personally I think it would be awesome if we could build Android apps using the platform so hopefully google will make that possible in the future.